A local restaurant owner was part of a scheme to provide illegal immigrants with fraudulent driver’s licenses, authorities said Thursday as new details about a raid on the D.C. Department of Motor Vehicles center in Georgetown emerged.
Suspects purchased bogus IDs for several reasons; to hide their illegal immigrant status, because they couldn’t pass the driver’s test, or because they were involved in other criminal activities and wanted their identities hidden, FBI spokeswoman Debbie Weierman said.
The FBI opened the investigation in March 2007 after agents received information from a source, Weierman said.
That contradicts statements by D.C. officials who said the case was opened after the city’s own internal auditor discovered irregularities in city records. Mayor Adrian Fenty said the arrests were proof that the D.C. safeguards were working.
Two women who were arrested in the raid were arraigned in federal court on charges of conspiring to commit identify fraud. They each face up to 15 years in prison and deportation if convicted. Prosecutors said more charges, including bribing public officials, were likely pending the outcome of a grand jury investigation.
FBI officials were withholding the names of four persons arrested Wednesday, including the teller who worked at the DMV. One suspect was a minor, and another was an illegal immigrant from El Salvador who was turned over to immigration authorities for deportation.
Inside the courtroom, defendants Gloria Gonzalez-Paz, 34, of Prince George’s County, and Dora Romero Morales, 29, of Vienna, appeared in separate hearings. Both women, who are in the U.S. on temporary work permits, wore headphones to listen to an interpreter.
Gonzalez-Paz, who owns a Tropicana Eatery franchise on 12th Street Northeast in D.C. with her husband, wiped tears from her cheeks.
Authorities said Romero Morales met Gonzalez-Paz and her 15-year-old daughter in the 3200 block of M Street outside the mall. The juvenile escorted Romero Morales to the lower level of the mall to where the DMV service center is located.
The teenager spoke to Romero Morales and pointed to the DMV offices, according to court documents. Romero Morales went into the offices and, without waiting in line, went straight to window No. 3, where a DMV employee, known as operator 1533, was sitting.
At the window, Romero Morales read from a sheet of paper that appeared to include a bogus D.C. address and information from a Virginia identification card, court documents state. The DMV employee fraudulently entered data into the DMV computer system and handed over a D.C. driver’s license without Romero Morales completing the required tests, authorities allege.
